


Turn Down the Lights

by Batsymomma11



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Wonder Woman (Comics), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feels, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Long-Term Relationship(s), Marriage, Wonderbat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 08:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16114904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batsymomma11/pseuds/Batsymomma11
Summary: "She leaned one shoulder against the door frame, taking in the mundane details like a starving victim, studying all the flecks of truth that made Bruce the man she loved. That made him her husband."Diana comforts Bruce in the way all lovers do.Inspired by the song, 'Stuck on the Puzzle' by Alex Turner





	Turn Down the Lights

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this little one-shot listening to music in my car this morning. Thank you Alex Turner. It's soft and gooey with just a touch of angst. Just the way I like it :) 
> 
> I do not own DC or its characters. I do own this story.  
> Enjoy!!

**“Fingers dimming the lights, like you’re used to bein’ told that you’re trouble. And I spent all night, stuck on the puzzle.”**

**Alex Turner, Stuck on the Puzzle**

 

She found him in their bed, with those thin-framed spectacles on his nose and a thick paperback book in his hand, drawn up just a pinch too close to his face for reading. He could have stepped right out of a nineteen fifties Cary Grant movie.

Long legs crossed at the ankles in a pair of striped pajama pants stuck out from a thick black robe. He’d shoved the sleeves up to his elbows, like they’d been bothering him, but he was too cold to remove the whole thing.

She leaned one shoulder against the door frame, taking in the mundane details like a starving victim, studying all the flecks of truth that made Bruce the man she loved. That made him her husband.

His brows were furrowed, lips mouthing softly over a word in the novel he was reading here and there, as if he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. He probably wasn’t. His hair was finger mussed and dark as the shadows that clung on the periphery of their nightstand lamps. Elegant but scarred fingers tapped on one thigh, absent and slightly irritated. A buzzing of energy beneath the skin, just hovering for the pulse of electricity to snap them into action.

He was always moving.

Always thinking.

Never fully at rest.

Like he couldn’t shut his mind down long enough to fully let go.

Diana watched him another breath, another heartbeat, then reached slightly trembling fingers to turn down the lights.

The room fell into murky shadows, where alabaster moonbeams pooled on the carpeting and the drapes of the still open windows. Breeze from the gardens and bay swam into the room, salting the air with a lullaby to soften and still. To just—be still.

Dark eyes flitted abruptly over those black rims and found hers. Held. One breath, one heartbeat—she’d crossed the room and was standing at his bedside, offering a half-smile that turned into an easy line as she reached for Bruce and took those glasses off his nose. A delicate whispering sigh broke his lips and he sank into the pillows at his back as Diana took the book too and put it with the glasses.

There was a bottle of ibuprofen beside the lamp. A sprawled-out crossword with a pen. A single candle that had been gutted down to a nubby wick and a wafer of wax. Pieces of a puzzle that made a person. That made a man that she loved.

She traced the pad of a finger beneath the thin skin of one eye, following the contours of a dark circle that meant not enough sleep and hard, dirty, work.

 _Let me love you. Let me be there for you,_ her fingers spoke for her, whispering a language hidden to anyone but lovers.

He caught the hand, drawing it to his mouth, pressing slightly wind-chapped lips into her palm.

_Only you, princess._

The shiver that wracked her frame was strong and familiar. An expected dance that still brought such visceral surprise when it happened.  

Like water, Diana slid onto the bed and straddled legs that were long and lean, but strong. So strong. She drew her fingers into Bruce’s hair, running her painted nails over his scalp until those broad shoulders wilted and the breathy sigh from before turned into a sharp intake of breath. A quickening pulse beneath her fingertips.

Blood rushed beneath pinked skin, hands found anchors on hips and their lips met in a feverish coupling that was as easy as it was rewarding. Diana melted into Bruce, taking them deep beneath the folds of moonlight, basking with him in the sanctuary of their bedroom.

The hands moved, etching invisible lines into skin that ached. The clothes were easy obstacles to overcome and Diana reveled in how she became cradled in Bruce’s heat. How everything in the room, in their mingling breaths, became narrowed.

Heart pressed desperately into heart. Soul curled fondly around soul.   

Everything slowed. And then stopped.

They stayed in that place where time stopped until sobbing breaths became slow and lax. Until fluttering hearts, became steady and deep once more. Then time creeped with seconds and minutes and reality right behind it.

Bruce wrapped around her, all limbs and engulfing heat, his nose burying into her loose hair like a cat who’d been fed too much milk. He hummed out a breath, lips finding that piece of tender skin behind her ear to skate over, to tease just a little more. Gooseflesh broke out over her frame and she shivered deeper into his hold.

“I needed that.”

“Did you?” she asked, voice sounding strange after all the silence. “I hadn’t noticed.”

She could feel his smile on her skin. “You know what I need before I do.”

“If one would bother to look, you’re really not that hard to read,” Diana mused, tracing fingers down a heavy forearm, “A pinched brow, those irritated tapping fingers, and that godawful book you insist upon reading over and over. It usually means there is something on your mind. That you are in a state of unrest.”

“Crime and Punishment is an excellent book.”

“I’ll admit, Dostoyevsky is brilliant. But you’ve read it a thousand times.”

A pause, the tightening of muscles like braided steel chords, then, “It helps me sort things out.”

Diana rolled in those arms, feeling the drag of Bruce’s legs as they tried to trap her. She nuzzled into him, forehead to forehead and sighed out a long steady breath. She’d known from the moment she’d seen him sitting on their bed, wearing those glasses, staring hard at that book, that something was wrong. That the very air felt tight and dirty with pain.

“Talk to me.”

Bruce bit his lip, eyes slipping closed and scrunching tight, blocking out the room and Diana for a moment.

“She was three,” his voice was only a whisper.

Diana kept her eyes closed, but squeezed closer, grounding them both by finding a hand and weaving their fingers together. He was all callous and long artist hands. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t even know the story.”

“She’s dead?”

A pause, a breath, a heartbeat—a struggle to swallow past the acid of failure and grief. “Yes.”

“It is not your fault.”

“I should have saved her. I could have.”

“You cannot save everyone.”

“I want to.”

Gods bless this man that ached for the innocent, that felt each death and pushed himself to the brink of sanity to save just one more. Diana pressed her lips to his brow, smoothing the wrinkles of tension. Then those sharp cheekbones, lightly dusted in whiskers. The frowning mouth, that struggled to give in. To let go. His lips were hard, unyielding, and then, finally, inviting and trusting. Open.  

She could taste the hope and eager need to be forgiven of a crime he didn’t commit on his tongue.

“I do too, Bruce. But it’s not your fault. You must remember that when the day is long and the deaths are too real. You are just a man. A good man, but just flesh and blood. Forgive yourself.”

“Diana,” he breathed her in, gripping fistfuls of her hair, pressing their bodies flush until not even an inch of space remained. But the kiss was achingly sweet. A promise, given and taken, of forever. “God, how I need you.”

She smiled, knowing she would die for him. She would live for him. Anything he needed, whatever the cost. It was freeing to know that he felt the same. That the strength of the emotions pressing into her breastbone and rushing up her throat, were returned.

“And I need you.”


End file.
